Archive for November, 2009|Monthly archive page

this magazine is FABULOUS, what an amazing resource! I’m going to have to dig back through their back issues.

I also got loads of reading done in The Animals Reader, and found myself really keen on the writing of Boria Sax. Think I’ll try and find his book The Mythical Zoo to have a complete look at. Next up is Steve Baker’s What is the Postmodern Animal which should be good, as he does collaborative work with an artist and is excited about how science and contemporary art can overlap.

I also found these really wonderful back issue articles from the NY Times:

We’ve just had our 10-minute studio crits. I found mine to be very useful, as Daniella and Eilleen both did not see the relationship or importance of the animal masks in collaboration with the game of Us & Them. I found really positive feedback about the idea of “deep knowledge” or totemic knowledge from information when humans were more integrated into animal culture. I think I need to focus on this idea right now, with the finger puppets.

I need to make a set so that I can begin to experiment with my animals. I want to have it so you can get access to the stage from below and behind, but so that the stage is elevated off the ground. so i can both sit behind the stage and be concealed by it: so I can see what I’m doing but be disguised by set pieces.

Glen recommended a book on this deep, animal knowledge still present in humans, called Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan, and Eilleen recommended Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop. I’ve just bought Dragons of Eden on Abe Books, because they don’t have it in the ECA Library.

Today I also looked into the idea that “miniaturisation allows for cerebral control” that I remember hearing off of Jamie about a month ago… he read it in Charles Jencks book Heteropolis. I typed this into Google and found a woman named Susan Stewart who wrote a book entitled On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. I found an excerpt of this writing online which quoted:

The miniature allows for the compression of history onto an easily sentimentalised body, which is positioned as innocent while being invoked as a symbolic reference to past cultures.

This I find very relevant to the finger puppets I’ve been using, and I’m quite excited to have a look at this book which I’ve put on request from ECA as it’s currently check out.

SELF AWARENESS — A key factor in the debate over if humans really are superior over the rest of Animalia. Thinking of finger puppets illustrating the themes I’m currently interested in, and which began through reading So You Think You’re Human.

I am currently reading segments of The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings. Today I read John Berger’s Why Look at Animals and Gilles Deleuze and Gelix Guattari’s Becoming-Animal.

ALSO, Daniella showed me this amazing site to get pre-felted wool from: just fantastic.

Last night Jamie brought home just the most amazing book on papier mache from the library at ECA. It is by Peter Rush, and goes over different techniques of papier mache than I’ve used before. They use tissue paper and wallpaper paste… I think wallpaper paste seems like overkill personally, but i think using tissue paper is a great idea, as you could then eliminate a base coat of colour to cover newsprint text.

In addition, it shows how to make models as you would to photograph for book illustrations. Jamie and I will do an experiment with these techniques on Sunday, making finger puppets. I’m excited to experiment with these techniques in a narrative form. I need to find more theory on narrative in artwork.